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ÀÛ¼ºÀÏ : 18-02-22 00:00
[THE NEW YORKER] Reading North Korean Poems During the South Korean Olympics
 ±Û¾´ÀÌ : ÃÖ°í°ü¸®ÀÚ
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¡°The Red Years¡± is a collection of poems allegedly smuggled out of North Korea inside a copy of ¡°The Selected Works of Kim Il Sung.¡±

Photograph by Hiroji Kubota / Magnum

Pyeongchang, South Korea, where the Winter Olympics are currently under way, is extremely cold. Subzero temperatures inspired organizers to plan a relatively swift opening ceremony, forced biathletes to reconsider their choice of gloves, and sent television commentators in frantic search of cosmetics that wouldn¡¯t freeze their faces off. Watching the Games, I have been thinking about the temperature fifty miles north, on the other side of the D.M.Z., where basic amenities—never mind battery-powered jackets, space heaters, free coffee, and weatherproof foundation—are harder to come by. Power outages are common in North Korea: in recent years, according to some reports, the country¡¯s net electricity usage fell to nineteen-seventies levels, even as its population grew by nearly ten million. Then there is the untold number of prisoners in labor camps; presumably, their defenses against the weather are grossly limited.

The impassivity of the natural world—and the ruthlessness of winter, in particular—is a recurring theme in ¡°The Red Years,¡± a new collection of political poems attributed to a North Korean dissident writing under the pen name Bandi. ¡°The Red Years¡± was published in South Korea in January; it does not yet have a publisher in the United States. The book is a kind of companion to ¡°The Accusation,¡± the collection of Bandi¡¯s short stories published in the U.S. by Grove Atlantic, last March—these poems are said to have been part of the original, crumbling manuscript, which was smuggled across the border, enclosed in a copy of ¡°The Selected Works of Kim Il Sung¡± at the urging of one of Bandi¡¯s defector relatives.

¡°The Accusation¡± was translated into English by Deborah Smith, who is best known for her work with Han Kang, the author of ¡°The Vegetarian.¡± In Smith¡¯s hands, the stories of ¡°The Accusation¡± conveyed something powerful and subtle about life under totalitarianism. The poems of ¡°The Red Years,¡± which are being translated by Heinz Insu Fenkl for publication in the U.S., are more blunt. They reflect ¡°a typical North Korean style of poem,¡± Krys Lee, an assistant professor of English literature at Yonsei University, in South Korea, and the author of the novel ¡°How I Became a North Korean,¡± told me by e-mail. ¡°It has the kind of slightly sentimental and general, abstract language that I associate with the country.¡± A prefatory poem, which also appears in ¡°The Accusation,¡± acknowledges as much: ¡°Though they be dry as desert / and coarse as grassland / miserable as affliction / and primitive as stone-age tools, / Reader! / I beseech you—read my words.¡±

The collection¡¯s most explicitly political poems make heavy use of comparisons to the natural environment: the narrator repeatedly looks to, and often rails against, the mountains, trees, and flowers that surround him. The poem ¡°Green Leaves, Falling,¡± dedicated to ¡°the young political prisoners awaiting execution,¡± laments the ¡°out of season¡± chill wind that has cut short ¡°youthful dreams.¡± ¡°How much is their worth, their lives, those green shoots?¡± the poet asks. ¡°I will not forget you, piteous green leaves falling, leaves falling.¡±

There is no shortage of Bandi skeptics: nearly all of the Korean experts I spoke to or corresponded with for this piece—scholars, translators, political scientists—had reservations. According to the account appended to ¡°The Accusation,¡± Bandi is a living North Korean writer, employed by the state, who wrote these works in secret, in the late eighties and early-to-mid nineties. (At least some of the poems seem to have been written later, likely in the nineties and early aughts.) ¡°There is speculation that he may be a North Korean refugee, a suspicion that I¡¯ve also harbored,¡± Lee, who spent many years working closely with North Korean defectors as an activist, told me. Even the writer¡¯s staunchest boosters seem comfortable with the possibility that Bandi might be an idea as much as a particular person: in January, the South Korean human-rights activist Do Hee-yun, one of the only people to have seen the original manuscript, told me that he wondered if Bandi was its sole author, or if the stories perhaps represented the work of a group of writers—some sort of dissident-writers¡¯ collective.

For now, the truth about who, exactly, Bandi is remains a mystery. But the poems themselves stand as an unambiguous denunciation of a government that has spectacularly failed its people. Reading them this week, after the White House announced that plans for a secret meeting between Vice-President Pence and a high-level North Korean delegation had fallen through—meaning that the small window for diplomacy between the two countries opened by the Olympics had all but closed—their sombre and sometimes repetitive language seems appropriate. In North Korea, the winter may feel interminable. In the poem ¡°Blizzard,¡± the agony of life under the rule of the Kim dynasty is conveyed with a scream into the frigid sky:

blizzard, blizzard, the sound of winter crying

chest pounding, sobbing, the sound of winter crying

spring, summer, fall, and winter—four seasons, and only you

weeping—the indignity of your unfortunate fate

never knowing soft flowers, green leaves, ripe fruit

only frost and snow, born of cold north wind

your whole life huddling, cringing, shivering

weeping—the indignity of your unfortunate fate

blizzard, blizzard, the sound of winter crying

chest pounding, sobbing, the sound of winter crying

try to tear it up, throw it out, your unfortunate fate

running, spewing blood, in the sound of winter crying


 
 

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